Epidurals, in which labor pain is reduced, are expected to remain outside coverage under the proposals.
So what, pain relief is an optional upcharge, like choosing to add avocado to your sandwich?
Don’t get me wrong, I’d be ecstatic if the US went this far to help new parents, but fuck whoever decided that it’s acceptable to omit epidurals from the covered costs.
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I’m seeing articles about Japanese youth taking record advantage of temporary work programs like working holiday visas, but living abroad for 1-3 years is quite different from leaving Japan altogether. The bigger issues seem to be what’s causing both the temp work abroad and low birth rate issues: high CoL relative to wages, poor work culture, and general perception that the “traditional” life trajectory is unfulfilling/unrewarding.
In the US too?! We’re saved!
Good move by Japan here.
And watch as the birth rate increase ten fold
Nah, you gotta feed, house, educate, dress the kid and be there as a parent afterwards.
That’s a good step in the right direction but Japan has much bigger issues than the cost of giving birth to explain why Japanese aren’t having kids.Well that is true but from most of the parents I talk to,it’s the cost of having a baby that’s the first stumbling block,and this cam only help
Actually, it has been identified as one of the bigger issues. Lack of childcare options means one parent needs to stay home, means one income, means lots of women tend to just work a few years in office exclusively to find a good husband and then drop out of everything (cue the incel population who understands that if they can’t have a huge income, they might never get laid). Also, single income participates in the terrible work culture where staying at one company forever is the better option because people who leave get burned everywhere. And this lifestyle, this work identity, this lack of prospectives, is a big part of why young people are losing hope fast. This vicious cycle has been pretty well known forever, and childcare has been recognized as a major starter of it for a while.
Housing in Japan is often a culture of 3 generations living in the same home, single income participates in that too, but there are housing options - Japan has a notoriously high number of empty homes, abandoned and falling apart; we don’t have any perspective right now on what direction this could go if the demographics started improving. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone ever bring up that education had any particular problem, as far as I can tell they get what they need. In all of those fields there’s probably a bunch of issues about outdated standards everywhere, but there’s no big issue about entire spans of population dropping out of education or housing or feeding.
